"Getting Started" - researching steps

You should always start your Genealogical Researching with Yourself,
gathering all your Vital Records (birth, marriage, civil and church
records). Then write down everything you know about your family and
put it on Pedigree and Family Group charts. You can find these at your
local Genealogical Society, Latter-Day Saints Family History Center,
and local library.

The Latter-Day Saints have a web site with Basic Information on Beginning a Family History Search.
You can find it at: http://www.lds.org.

FHC (Family History Center) is a branch of the Latter-Day
Saints(LDS) Church in Salt Lake City Utah. There are over 2,000 local
branches in about 50 countries around the world with libraries
containing filmed records. The FHC is open free to the public. You
do not have to be a member of the church to use the library. No one
will try to convert you or preach to you. To locate a FHC near you,
check your phonebook yellow pages under "Churches, Latter-day Saints"
for a listing, or call 800-346-6044 or check
http://www.everton.com/fhcusa.html.

Do interviews with your relatives to gather all the information you
can about them and what they might know about other relatives.

Then you keep working BACKWARDS.

Get Vital Records for your Parents (again civil and church
records). Your Parents may have died or no longer have these records,
this will mean writing letters to the State Department of Health,
State Archives, or County Clerk's Office in the county where the
events occurred (most records are NOT on-line). These records
will give you information on your parents and take you back a
generation to your Grandparents.

Do not skip a generation and be sure to obtain the records to
confirm your data. To find out more about your Parents and
Grandparents, and their children, research the Federal Census; 1920
and 1900 contain so much information!!

You can order the Census records you need (for about $3.25) at all LDS FHC libraries
(call 800-346-6044 for a location) Many large state library maintain census records
and some smaller local libraries have census records also, just call your library.
You can also order them with the AGLL (American Genealogical Lending Library).
Go to the web site at
http://www.heritagequest.com for more information.
The site
http://www.familytreemaker.com/13_every.html
provides a list of the census years, and what was asked during those census years.

Work your way back to the ancestor who came to the US. Find the
Passenger Arrival Document. Find Naturalization Documents. These all
contain information that will take you overseas. You'll need to find
the name of the town/village, and Oblast/district that your ancestor
came from in order to find documents in Ukraine.